Greetings from Auschwitz: Smuggled Information about the Destruction of Slovak Jewry

Abstract

ABSTRACT As a client state of Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic was granted a number of benefits. One such alleged benefit was the allowing of correspondence between the deported Slovak Jews and those who remained in Slovakia. This article investigates the highly censored letters sent by Slovak Jews shortly after their deportation, in which they manage to code essential information on the destruction of Slovak Jewry. By examining these letters, which supposedly present the ‘good life’ of the Slovak Jews in their ‘new home,’ this article explores which information was ‘officially’ provided to Jews in Slovakia under the dictates of wartime propaganda and through the control of the enforced local Jewish Council—the Jewish Center—and what knowledge was actually being gathered. Such analysis, which specifically concerns the letters sent from Auschwitz-Birkenau, reveals the knowledge of the remaining Slovak Jewish community following the deportations to camps and ghettos in occupied Poland in 1942. By analyzing these letters alongside additional sources, such as postwar testimonies, the article sheds light on the impact these letters had the reactions and decisions made by the Jews who remained in Slovakia.